Author: Finance for Sight

SYDNEY: The Australian and New Zealand dollars hovered near two-month highs on Friday as worries about a global trade war abated a little, while Australia’s central bank sounded a hawkish tone on future rate cuts. Having eased for the first time in four years this week, the Reserve Bank of Australia seems in no hurry to go again with governor Michele Bullock saying cuts are far from guaranteed. “Future rate cuts will likely be more a case of benign inflation readings allowing the RBA to remove the restrictive nature of policy settings, rather than macro weakness requiring easing,” said Andrew…

A high-level Japanese group, which includes a former prime minister, has drawn up plans for Elon Musk’s Tesla to invest in Nissan following the collapse of its merger talks with Honda Motor, the Financial Times reported on Friday. The proposal, led by former Tesla board member Hiro Mizuno, is being supported by ex-premier Yoshihide Suga and his former aide Hiroto Izumi, the report said, citing unnamed sources. How Nissan and Honda’s $60 billion merger talks collapsed The group is hopeful that Tesla will become a strategic investor since they believe it is keen to acquire Nissan’s plants in the United…

The Pakistani rupee remained largely stable against the US dollar in the inter-bank market during the opening hours of trading on Friday. At 10am, the rupee was hovering at 279.45, a gain of Re0.01 against the greenback. The rupee had closed at 279.46 on Thursday. Internationally, the Japanese yen shot to a 2-1/2 month high on Friday on the back of a jump in Japanese inflation, while the US dollar was set for a third weekly drop in a row as traders calculated the start of Donald Trump’s second term has been mostly bluster on the tariff front. The yen…

JOHANNESBURG: European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Thursday that interactions between the United States and Russia showed Moscow had not given up its territorial goals in Ukraine, and that appeasing it would send a dangerous signal. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump shocked Europeans by arranging bilateral peace talks with Russia without including Ukraine, raising concerns that his approach to ending the conflict will benefit Russia. “We understand from those interactions that they (Russia) have had with the Americans (that) … they haven’t given up their goals,” Kallas on the sidelines of the G20 meeting of foreign…

India’s benchmark indexes are likely to open lower on Friday, adding to the declines seen so far this month, as nervousness around reciprocal U.S. tariffs and persistent foreign selling continued to dent risk sentiment. The GIFT Nifty futures were trading at 22,863 as of 08:20 a.m. IST, indicating that blue-chip Nifty 50 will open below Thursday’s closing level of 22,913.15. Most Asian markets were down on the day, tracking overnight losses on Wall Street. There is an absence of a clear trend, reflecting uncertainty in the Indian markets, with attempts by bulls to absorb dips failing to sustain over the…

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa opened on Thursday a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting with a call for “cooperation” amid geopolitical tensions and “rising intolerance”. Top diplomats from the world’s largest economies gathered in Johannesburg for the two-day talks held for the first time in Africa, overshadowed by the absence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “It is critical that the principles of the UN Charter, multilateralism and international law should remain at the centre of all our endeavours. It should be the glue that keeps us together,” Ramaphosa said. “Geopolitical tensions, rising intolerance, conflict and war,…

MUMBAI: The Indian rupee is expected to open modestly stronger on Friday, benefiting from a broadly weaker dollar that was weighed down by positional adjustments as traders recalibrated their expectations about U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies. The 1-month non-deliverable forward indicated that the rupee will open at around 86.60 to the U.S. dollar compared with 86.66 in the previous session. The dollar index declined to a more-than-two-month-low of 106.3 on Thursday and was last quoted a tad higher in Asia trading. The offshore Chinese yuan rose to a peak of 7.23, its highest level since late November, before trimming gains.…

BEIJING: China came out in support of U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to strike a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, at a G20 meeting in South Africa on Thursday, while U.S. allies rallied around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended U.S. policy on the war, scrapping a campaign to isolate Moscow with a phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin and talks between senior U.S. and Russian officials that have sidelined Ukraine. Trump on Wednesday then denounced Zelenskiy as a “dictator,” prompting statements of support for the Ukrainian…

Bank of Khyber (BoK) has formally initiated its transition into a full-fledged Islamic bank, the bank shared the development in its notice to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Thursday. “The bank has initiated the process for conversion from conventional to Islamic bank,” BoK said. The development comes as Islamic banking in Pakistan has seen significant growth over the past two decades, driven by strong demand, regulatory support, and Shariah-compliant financial solutions. The industry has expanded rapidly, with both full-fledged Islamic banks and conventional banks offering Islamic banking windows to cater to a growing customer base. Bank of Khyber’s profit…

WASHINGTON: The US State Department said on Thursday it has ordered a pause on all of its media subscriptions as part of government-wide efforts by the Trump administration to cut spending it deems as unnecessary. President Donald Trump has put tech billionaire Elon Musk in charge of a government downsizing team, DOGE, that has swept through federal agencies searching for spending cuts as part of Trump’s overhaul and shrinking of the US government. “The Department has paused all non-mission critical contracts for media subscriptions that are not academic or professional journals,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement emailed…